The Projects Overview

Projects are the home for your work in Spleen. This section explains the projects overview, imports, templates, project details and status, archiving, and actions that affect several projects at once.

The projects overview is the main place for finding and managing your work. It shows the projects in your workspace and gives you the controls for opening, creating, importing, archiving, exporting, and deleting them.

You can use the overview in two ways: as a quiet shelf of current writing projects, or as a management screen when you need to sort through several projects at once.

Table and grid view

Spleen can show projects in a table view or a grid view. Table view is practical when you want to compare details, sort projects, or select several projects for a bulk action. Grid view is more visual and shows each project as a card.

When a project has its own author or pen name, table view shows it in the sortable Author column and grid view shows it beneath the project title. If you have not set one for the project, these places remain blank even though supported reading exports can still use your account name as a fallback.

Use the Show project table and Show project grid icon buttons above the list to switch views on larger screens. Smaller screens use project cards automatically. The project itself does not change when you switch views.

Grid view also lets you add, replace, or remove a project’s book cover directly from its card. Cover controls are not shown in table view.

Opening a project

Open a project from its row or card to enter the writing workspace. The workspace opens the project overview with the project sidebar beside it, so you can review the project details and then choose a document when you are ready to write.

If you are returning to an existing project, Spleen helps you recognise it by its title, status, last updated date, and any visual details shown in the overview.

By default, opening a project takes you to the project overview inside the workspace, not directly to the first document or the last document you opened. From there you can review the project synopsis, structure, and details, then choose a document from the sidebar when you are ready to write.

See Edit Project Details for the title, subtitle, synopsis, author or pen name, type, paragraph indentation, and cover controls shown on this screen.

Project actions

Each project has an actions menu. Use it for tasks involving one project, such as opening the project, renaming it, changing its status, exporting, saving it as a template, archiving, unarchiving, or deleting it.

For active projects, the Project actions menu starts with Open, followed by Rename and Status. Next come Export, Share project or Stop sharing project, Save as template when your plan supports custom templates, Archive, and Delete. The Status submenu includes No status, Draft, Paused, and Finished. The Export submenu includes Include table of contents, PDF, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, and Spleen Archive.

Archived projects show Open, Export, Save as template when your plan supports it, Unarchive, and Delete. Rename, Status, and sharing actions are hidden while a project is archived.

On a smaller screen, the actions open in a panel from the bottom of the screen. Status and Export open their own screen inside that panel. Use Back to return to the main project actions.

Searching and filtering projects

The projects overview can help you narrow a long list of projects. Search or filtering controls are especially useful when you remember a project title but do not want to browse through every card or row.

The filter field matches project titles only. It does not search status, dates, synopsis text, project type, or other project details. The Projects and Archived buttons switch which group you are looking at, and the title filter applies within the selected group.

Sorting projects

In grid view, use the Sort projects button beside the title filter to choose Title, Author, Status, Created, or Updated. The same menu lets you choose ascending or descending order.

In table view on larger screens, sort by choosing a column heading instead. On smaller screens, projects use cards and the Sort projects button remains available.

Moving between pages

Table view shows 10 projects on a page. Grid view and the cards used on smaller screens show 15. When there is more than one page, use First, Previous, Next, and Last below the projects to move through the list. Changing pages returns you to the top of the project list.